I was going through some old photos and videos and discovered this gem that my mother-in-law recorded last Easter when she and my wife took Nora down to Extremadura and left me de Rodriguez. It was a great example of her Spanish language skills at 25 months old. Now, however, after the death of her great-grandfather, it’s a poignant video of them playing together in at his house in Extremadura. They had a really great time playing together that week.
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Today I discovered a macro feature of my video camera lens that I had forgotten existed. The first thing I did was pick up a one dollar bill that I have on my desk for some reason and examine POTUS1′s face. Impressed, I decided I needed to record a video of something very close up. Not having an ant farm or a pet praying mantis, I decided the best subject for my first macro video should be my gorgeous greenish-yellow eyes. It took a couple attempts to figure out how to best, without too much effort, keep the camera and my head from moving around too much. I ended up sitting on the floor with the camera resting on my desk. Clearly, this level of intimacy required some creepy background music, so I found some.
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One of Nora’s favorite pastimes lately is having imaginary arguments over the phone, usually with her friends from daycare or her daycare provider, but sometimes with her grandparents. Somehow, she latched on to one poor lad named Rubén and has ceaseless fights with him “over the phone”, perhaps giving a glimpse into boy troubles that await us in adolescence. Just like when she used to pretend to yell at another daycare classmate, I suspect that this poor Rubén fellow is completely innocent of all the charges he’s being accused of on a daily, hourly, and minutely basis, but it’s seems to be all real in Nora’s mind. Unfortunately, Rubén is one of the few kids at daycare that doesn’t have a mugshot next to his cubbyhole, so I don’t even know what he looks like. He certainly has Nora’s attention, though.
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No, this isn’t a post about a night at a karaoke bar. After noticing some singing ability in Spanish, I’ve been teaching Nora some English songs. Actually, for some reason, the first song I taught her was Frère Jacques in French. Lately when we sing that one, on the last line, she lifts up her shirt and touches her navel, which she calls her “ding dong” after so many doorbell jokes. The first English song was Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, which she picked up pretty quickly, enjoying gesturing to the sky on the “like a diamond in the sky” line.
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One of the things that most irks me, as an expat, is when someone claims that an entire country full of people are rude or lacking in manners. I guarantee you that if you go to live for even a short period of time in another country, you will notice general cultural behaviors that are different from your own culture; some will seem odd, and others will seem rude. I can also guarantee you that for every odd cultural mannerism you notice, the natives around you will notice at least one or two about you. With the right attitude, these cultural differences can add to the adventure that is having foreign friends and traveling and living abroad.
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You know that thing women do with their lips after applying lipstick, rubbing them together, presumably to even out the lipstick? Since I’ve never needed to, I’ve simply never learned to do that. When I try, I look like an idiot – more so than usual – and those facial muscles get exhausted in about two seconds and hurt for another minute. Some of you have already started doing it while you read this, and the rest of you will now. Go ahead…
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Earlier this week, my wife told me that, to celebrate a successful business meeting she was going to have with a client, she wanted to have pork chops and fried eggs for lunch. Then she said, “And save the big egg for me. Don’t use it for any other recipes.” I raised an eyebrow, “The big egg?” She smiled and said, “You’ll know it when you see it.”
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When I was sitting on the beach yesterday, I noticed something off in the distance out of the corner of my eye. In a split second, my unconscious pattern recognition neurons decided I’d seen a flock of birds. After several seconds of gazing at the phenomenon a kilometer down the beach, I’d determined that they were too big to be birds, and the flying was too orderly. They must be kites, my brain suggested, but…but…how?? They were flying in perfect formation, up, down, swooping, soaring, diving… What they really reminded me of was Boids, the artificial intelligence algorithm – one of my favorites! – that demonstrates how lifelike natural flocking behavior can be mimicked with very, very few lines of code.
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Today the weather was better than it’s been pretty much all year long. The key was the noticeable lack of wind, which normally makes our beach a little chillier than one would like. That the weather is so out of season made it all the more special, since we know there won’t be days like this until 2012. We decided to go to Laredo to walk around, but Nora caught wind that we’d be near the beach and insisted on taking her backpack full of buckets and shovels and things. We ended up sitting on the beach for about two hours playing in the sand, with Marga and myself in street clothes, not beach clothes. We had a grand old time.
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Two and a half years ago, just after the 2009 vernal equinox, my daughter, Nora, was born. It was quite exciting. She’s come quite a ways since then. Just last week, I heard her mother ask her how old she was in Spanish, and Nora responded “dos años y medio”. So immediately I set upon teaching her to say “two and a half” in English. It wasn’t easy, as she simply refused to even attempt the phrase for several days. But eventually I prevailed, just in time for her half-birthday. Marga had to work today (Nora also learned to say, “Today is Saturday!” today), so we didn’t have our traditional birthday hamburger feast.
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